Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. An American car company launches a car with persistent quality issues and fails to adequately address the problem. Eventually, it becomes known that the company knew of the problems all along and instead of doing the right thing, fights tooth and nail to suppress the seriousness of the situation. Welcome to the current state of the ongoing saga involving Ford’s Powershift dual clutch transmission.
The Detroit Free Press published an extremely thorough report on Ford’s problems with their infamous dual clutch transmission, and the results are damning. The company knew the transmission was problematic years before its introduction, and various individuals worked hard to cover up the extent of the issues. From the report:
A high-level, confidential analysis by Ford in 2012 acknowledged rushing the cars to production, taking shortcuts to save money and apparently compromising quality protocols instituted with fanfare by then-CEO Alan Mulally. That review, obtained by the Free Press, also said the transmissions would be phased out and a different technology used going forward, but that didn’t happen. The Focus went out of production after the 2018 model year; the 2019 Fiesta is the last of the line.
By the time of the 2012 review, which was labeled “Lessons Learned,” Ford had sold more than half a million of the cars.
“There is no fix at this time,” system testing engineer Tom Hamm wrote separately in an October 2012 email to four colleagues. “We have a task force working on the issue but they haven’t identified any fixes at this time.”
Time and time again, the Detroit Three rushed to introduce a new technology to market that repeatedly failed to meet internal quality standards, yet they did it anyway. The song remains the same:
Ford’s 2012 review showed that things went south from the start. The transmission architecture was selected 12 months later than normal — “limiting up-front engineering development time, resulting in ‘open’ deliverables at key program milestones,” the report said, citing compression of program approval, prototype verification, launch readiness and mass production.
“At each early checkpoint, it became more apparent” that the transmission systems for the 2011 Fiesta program “were not capable to meet customer expectations,” the review said.
The whole report is worth a read, as it details the extreme corporate dysfunction within the company, the push to stiff dealers on warranty reimbursement, and the horrible treatment owners got when they complained of problems.
Former CEO Mark Fields is slated to testify later this month. Hopefully this investigation leads to some sort of settlement for Fiesta and Focus owners.
Sources:
“Ford knew Focus, Fiesta models had flawed transmission, sold them anyway” Phoebe Wall Howard, Detroit Free Press
Related Reading:
“Ford’s 2012 review showed that things went south from the start. The transmission architecture was selected 12 months later than normal — “limiting up-front engineering development time, resulting in ‘open’ deliverables at key program milestones,” the report said, citing compression of program approval, prototype verification, launch readiness and mass production.”
Program compression is now the industry standard due to constantly tightening CAFE standards. Anyone remember the CVTs Ford put in their 500s and its variants? Ford has always made Fords, but now some of the best car companies have been reduced to doing the same.
So, I’m probably buying my mom’s Focus when she is finished with it. Its resale is gone. It is seven years old and still like new. Flawless, even. No problems at all.
Lucky you. The common issues don’t affect all cars. But they could very well affect yours down the road. Keep your fingers crossed.
Meanwhile Alan Mulally has been endlessly hailed the savior of Ford these past years. Seems like his systems to catch quality problems had a quality problem.
One thing that jumped out at me in the Free Press article was that when a much less serious problem manifested itself in Ford truck transmissions, Ford was quick to react.
Why? Because those vehicles are very profitable.
But Ford did everything possible to avoid making the necessary change – bring out a new transmission for these cars, as it did in Europe – because of their low profit margins. No doubt that makes buyers of the Focus and Fiesta feel loved.
And now Ford is giving up on passenger cars, except for the Mustang. Making buyers feel like second-class citizens certainly didn’t promote their loyalty over the long haul. Talk about the chickens coming home to roost…
I noticed the same thing too. Ford spent a mint designing and tooling up its own diesel V8 after the Navistar 6.0 fiasco. Whatever it takes to protect its cash cows. But they’re walking away from smaller cars, so who cares? Just manage the hit to minimize it as much as possible.
I can say one thing – reading this account does not make me want to buy the next-generation Escape over a Honda CR-V when it comes time to buy another vehicle.
Apparently Ford only cares about you if you buy an F-150, Super Duty or Expedition.
I would recommend you do some research relating to engine oil dilution before buying a CR-V. I don’t know any car company that doesn’t pull this cr@p.
I have been following the issue…I own a 2017 Civic EX-T that was recalled for a software update. So far, it appears to be working.
I’m glad yours is ok. Lots of people haven’t been that lucky.
I too am watching that issue very closely with my own 2016 Civic EX-T.
Like you, Geeber, so far so good.
From the blogs I’ve determined the issue is more of a problem with folks who don’t drive it long enough to warm it up (like my wife and her Lancer).
Since mine’s my DD, and one way is 34 miles of mostly highway, I’m hopeful to dodge that bullet.
Expecting Honda to step up and do the right thing is a pipe dream. While my service at my dealer has been good for the most part, one thing they did not take me seriously on was a disturbing engine noise at start up after the car cools off for about 1/2 an hour. There IS a service bulletin out for this issue. But they’ll only fix it if THEY can duplicate the problem. Funny, they never seem to be able to do that, despite explicit instructions on how to get it to do that. I even have videos that clearly show it making this disturbing noise.
So Honda is just as bad as Ford, so let us pray that our turbo Civics never have this oil and gas mixing problem.
I would imagine the “inability” to duplicate the concern is tied directly to how little labor the the repair pays a flat rate tech. That is decided by the manufacturer.
Until recently Ford didn’t care that much about the Expedition buyers as they let that rot on the vine longer than anything in their line up. The Escape is a very important product for Ford. For many years it was the best selling CUV and I’m betting they would like that title back, especially, now that the segment it plays in is the second largest, behind the full size pickup, in terms of total volume.
Hm, maybe Honda is getting worse. When I had a ‘99 with the explody auto trans they replaced it for free out of warranty at 57k mi.
As the owner of a 7 year old Expedition on its second 5.4L V8, I can assure you truck owners don’t get any more love. The basic engine was great, but won’t last much beyond the warranty period (especially if oil change intervals are stretched), and it’s cheaper for the dealers to swap an engine than fix the valve train issues when they go bad. Which is why the resale is so poor.
Word is the 3.5L turbo V6 is also suffering very high failure rates, due to carbon buildup on the valves. A fix has now been implemented (new engines have BOTH direct AND port injection), but there are 7 or 8 years worth of production out there already.
It is not like Ford had any other option than to build their own Diesel, as Navistar made it clear that they were not going to renew the contract. Near the end of that mess Ford actually had to get a ruling from the court forcing Navistar to ship them engines.
This really, really, really makes me want to buy a Mustang. Not.
Who knows what problems are lurking there? And seeing how they treat Focus and Fiesta owners, I have little faith that they would treat me equitably. And I have no need for the F-150 or SUV
I can only offer a short-term opinion as I’ve only had my 19 Bullitt since December and have just shy of 6k miles on it. The 5.0 is a powerful engine and so far has had no issues (other than it doesn’t like regular 87 octane gas – no Ford product I’ve owned since 2000 has, by the way). However, the idea of a “spray-in” cylinder liner does make me nervous. And an oil maintenance window with no set value (just go by the oil life meter) just doesn’t seem trustworthy to me. So, that being said, so far so good. Now ask me at 36001 miles how things are going and you might hear a different story…
Aside – I suspect one of the reasons that Ford moved to the dual fuel injection system is that direct injection gasoline engines all have a tendency to foul their intake valves (I’ve owned several different versions over the last few years and can attest to this; GM, I’m looking at you and your 3.6…) over time. Port injection had the benefit of fuel spray passing over the valves during operation, allowing the detergents in the fuel to help keep the valves clean. Since no fuel passes the valves in a pure DI engine, no cleaning occurs. Over time you end up with carbon build-up and other issues.
Last bit – at the risk of starting a flame war between diesel fans and opponents, anyone else notice that the current iteration of diesel vehicles (cheaters and coal-rollers notwithstanding) have almost spotless exhaust pipes whereas DI gas vehicles have obvious soot around the exhaust outlets? Sort of makes me wonder which one is worse for particulates…
Well at the time Ford was not planning on walking away from cars, they were planning on continuing to build them. The underlying current that everyone seems to be dismissing is CAFE. That is the reason for this transmission to have existed in the first place. That is one of the reasons they felt they couldn’t walk away from this as a traditional planetary/torque converter automatic wouldn’t have met the targets. There is also the fact that they had a contract with Getrag to purchase a certain number of them.
Now the problems with this transmission and resulting backlash/loss of goodwill most likely did factor into the dropping of the Focus in NA.
CAFE is not the root cause if that’s what you are implying. Everybody is subject to the same CAFE rules and others don’t have the same issue. Ford chose this (transmission) as their way to comply with CAFE. If their product mix was different or if their engineering was different, or if they really cared about their customer then this would not have occurred. Sometimes someone’s gotta take one for the team but the customer should never be the one taking it…You don’t sell bad product and if you do so unwittingly, you figure out how to correct the issue, not blame the buyer.
CAFE is the root reason this, other automated manual and CVT transmissions exist. Ford is not the only one that has had issues when abandoning the traditional Automatic to chase CAFE numbers. More than one mfg has had problematic CVTs.
As has been mentioned many times, outside of the NA market they did use a different transmission and that was to chase CAFE numbers.
Of course that doesn’t mean that Ford did the right thing with this transmission. Nor does it mean that it is the government’s fault that Getrag messed up on a number of things. It’s also not CAFE’s fault that Ford didn’t figure out an alternative transmission and tell Getrag what they can do with their contract, since they had failed to deliver an acceptable product.
However its not so easy to just find capacity for a couple hundred thousand transmissions per year, plus switching so soon could be seen as admitting that the previous trans was defective. There is also the issue that this was not the only Getrag product they used.
While some dealers certainly treated the customer poorly Ford did spend a lot of effort and money trying to create fixes. They did a number of different calibrations and changed the friction material specifications a number of times in an attempt to fix a number of the issues.
In the end the bean counters at Ford are the ones to blame. They are the ones making decisions based on CAFE targets and cost of building a car. It seems as though they were too busy paying attention to the pennies and not paying attention to the dollars, ie the warranty liability and loss of good will. Engineering and Legal both seemed to have wanted to call it a number of times along the way.
This is all true, of course. But adding fuel mileage numbers as a hard metric which must be hit, choices are required that otherwise would not be. Yes, Ford should have found another way to hit the required targets. But we have to acknowledge that CAFE put the targets in place that required meeting.
The modern iteration of CAFE (just like the older one) has generated a plethora of complicated, expensive methods to eke fractional MPGs out of a design. I keep reading of valvetrain issues from direct injection, lubrication issues from super-thin oils, and then of course things like these transmissions. In real life, most people (and most manufacturers) would gladly trade 1 or 2 mpg for a vehicle that runs well and lasts longer with lower repair costs. I am seeing a repeat of the early 80s right now, which was early in the CAFE learning curve last time around. Until manufacturers get through this period of experimentation and learning, we are going to be making do with some very compromised and problematic designs. And yes, some companies will make better decisions about these things than others.
When all is said and done in the court of law, what will happen? Will it favor buyers, as the VW Dieselgate settlement did, with owners who held on to the cars getting big payouts while those who got rid of the cars getting nothing, or just a nominal amount for their losses? Will Ford be required to buy back or fully fix or replace the transmissions in all the affected cars? Will dealers get compensation for warranty work denied? There are so many questions, and no good answers. Ford, and Ford shareholders, should be prepared for a shock to their system.
With Dieselgate, the problem was with vehicles not being able to meet the required emissions standards. The operation of the vehicles wasn’t affected, if I recall correctly, so owners weren’t keen to dump them on VW. If anything, some of the owners I knew were very reluctant to give up their vehicles, as they liked them.
In this case, I seriously doubt that many Focus and Fiesta owners are going to be reluctant to give up their vehicles.
I seriously doubt Ford will have buy back the cars. Cheating on the emissions tests meant that VW was selling vehicles that didn’t meet the standards which is illegal. Selling a shoddy product may not be a very good idea, but it is not illegal.
The most likely outcome will be that Ford will have to extend the warranty on the faulty transmissions. They may or may not actually improve the transmission. They could just replace your failed transmission with an equally faulty unit. When the extended warranty is over and the transmission blows up again, you’re just out of luck.
Dual clutch transmissions are used in a lot of heavy trucks, they dont seem to have these problems, they arent a slushbox and dont drive like one, but like CVT autos a better mousetrap isnt always a good idea, a friend has a dual clutch Ford Mondeo diesel and no problems so far.
Is it a dry clutch or wet clutch? I rented a PowerShift Ford Galaxy a few years ago in Europe and was delighted by the transmission, it made the minivan actually a joy to drive. Turns out it was a wet clutch design instead of the dry used in the subject vehicles,
Ford uses a different automatic transmission in the Fiesta (and I would guess the Focus?) that is equipped with the 3 cylinder EcoBoost engine. You have to wonder why they didn’t use that automatic transmission across the line.
I currently drive a Ford, and really wanted a Fiesta when I heard it was returning to the US market. Unfortunately, Ford saw fit to build all but the base Fiestas with that troublesome automatic transmission. Oddly, the Focus 3 cylinder engine cars are predominantly equipped with an automatic transmission even though a manual transmission would seem to be the better idea.
The 1.0 doesn’t need the help of the automated manual to meet CAFE targets so it could have the traditional automatic.
I liked this quote from the article:
“You want to know why you don’t want to do anything about it? It’s work. It comes right back at you — drop everything you’re doing, work around the clock and you’re on the hook to explain what you’re doing and the weight of the company is on your shoulders and it’s incredibly stressful and intense. You face the repercussions of publishing recovery plans and explaining three times a day to upper levels of management. You have no time to do the rest of your job and you put your Superman cape on and fix things.”
On the other hand, the engineer says, nobody’s career was hurt by the debacle.
Sounds about right.
This is disheartening. It seems that the Good Ford/Bad Ford syndrome lives. Both are in the same showroom at the same time and you only find out which is which after you (or enough other people) buy it.
I will never forget renting a Focus when I was visiting Atlanta in 2013. I got about 5 miles from the rental car agency and then turned right back around to return it. The transmission shifts were absolutely terrible. I had never experienced anything like it in my life. I told them that the transmission was wonky. They laughed at me and said there was nothing wrong and that was how things were supposed to be. I kept the car, but was convinced the thing was going to stall out on me. I haven’t driven a Ford product since.
I rented a Fiesta in 2012, only 7500 miles on it but the auto transmission was scary-bad, with weird slippages during gear changes and at random times. Fortunately it put me off buying a Focus a year or two later, I waited until the Mazda3 launched.
I am a long time Ford lover and Ford owner but this, after the earlier insult of no more regular cars, has put me over the edge.
It has been decades since I’ve owned Ford stock. Luckily I made a $1,340 capital gain back then (1989). I’ve owned many new Ford cars, but no stock, since then.
Edward, I hope you get out of your automatic Focus OK financially. I hope Ford is forced, eventually, to buy all these cars back at a favorable price for the deceived owners. Maybe it will bankrupt Ford; I don’t care anymore. Maybe the PPIR property along I-25 will be full of Focus and Fiesta Fords – to replace all the diesel VWs that have been there now for a couple of years. What did VW do with them; what will Ford do with theirs?
I’ve written this before but I don’t know how I got so lucky to avoid this fiasco. I loved Fords and liked my dealer. I bought a new ’12 Focus – but a 5 speed manual. I bought a new ’15 Transit Connect – but with a different (European usage) 6 speed automatic. Both cars (Focus gone, still have TC) were great.
But now I am just disgusted about Ford. The new little car I bought this year is a Corolla Hatchback. My wife’s Explorer is getting replaced next spring. She is on track for Highlander or RAV-4. Ford has lost me but I feel regret and sorrow – not bitterness and hate.
Regarding the VW’s most of them were crushed almost fully intact. I was at a local Pick-N-Pull when they were in the middle of processing them en-mass. They had something like 40 pallets of tires and wheels stacked up in the holding area where they had cars sitting in the pouring rain all windows down, while they recovered fluids. They went straight to the crusher after the tires, battery and fluids were removed. Inside you could get a set of wheels, with tires, some quite new, for $129 or $139 for a set depending on size/type.
However I don’t see Ford being made to repurchase these vehicles across the board. The federal gov’t was behind the VW’s going to the crusher since they were not legal to have been sold in the first place. Of course they did not actually mandate the crushing, just that they had to be made legal and for many of the cars that would have exceeded their value.
A shame, you’d think someone would have paid VW to strip useful non-drivetrain parts off them — seats and such.
Well apparently many of them went to Pick-N-Pull and the reality is that business is all about the metal as Schnitzer Steel purchased wrecking yards across the US primarily to control their supply to meet their contracts for scrap metal sales to China. That is their main profit center not the sales of parts. So they probably didn’t care if they couldn’t set them in the yard. Even if they could there would be no need for the volume of cars they were getting. The one I was at had pallets of tires and wheels that represented over 100 cars worth.
The other fact is if someone needs something like a headlight or tail light VW would prefer to sell you a new one, not have you buy a used one for a fraction of the cost.
So chances are that the contract did state they had to go directly to the crusher.
Edit. Here is a quote from a Pick-N-Pull manager’s Linked-In.
Presently, the Architect and Program Manager of the largest vehicle buy-back and scrapping program in U.S. history, a highly visible national disposal program working in partnership with the world’s largest vehicle manufacture to dispose of emissions recalled vehicles. Obligations include formally selecting key facilities, training staff and managing the scope of work against a series of complex matrices to successfully satisfy U.S. Department of Justice, EPA and various States’ court degrees.
Interestingly what Google led me to his page from had a snippet that said “PICK-n-PULL Auto & Truck Dismantlers … winning the bid to dispose of 200,000+ emissions recalled TDI Volkswagens.”
As someone who worked at a vw dealership, your story makes absolutely no sense…maybe on 100k mule.plus models, but what vw did with a majority of the buybacks was to send them to dealerships to do the fix then sent them to auction to be sold as used cars. My dealership would buy 30 to 40 at a time and sell them almost as fast as we could get them in. Vw dealerships would get first dibs on the auctions and vw has a cpo diesel warranty the gives an extra 2 years and unlimited miles.
And, the epa laws state that until a.fix was okayed those cars were in limbo. They couldn’t be sold in overseas markets, no could they be crushed. Hell…the fix has.a.very reasonable cost to do, so even ones with 100k plus would still give a return. Maybe your market is the total opposite of the Colorado market, but as someone who was a part of these transactions and dealt with the fixed cars and sold more than a few…it doesn’t really pass the smell test
I’ve seen tons of “fixed” TDI’s come in the market over the last year here, if you look at the Carfax it shows they all sat for a year or more and then were fixed and now for sale. Mostly newer models, 2014 and up IIRC. Emich in Denver seemed to have 50-60 at a time in their CPO inventory, as did other dealers.
A number of them have also been showing up in rental fleets, apparently.
A local dealer was selling 2016 diesel Jettas for 6999 last year. Unlimited mileage warranty for 2 years and all maintenance included. Tempting…until I remembered my family’s VW experiences.
For some reason I can’t find the pics I took of the stacks and stacks of tires and wheels nor the cars being processed but here is a shot of a truck load going into a Pick-N-Pull that looks like the one I saw them processing them at.
https://imgur.com/gallery/A6KrE
One of the many threads you’ll find of people who did a VIN check on their old TDI to find it crushed. https://www.reddit.com/r/tdi/comments/ayla2e/looked_up_my_dieselgate_tdi_vin_to_find_it_was/
One of those reports https://imgur.com/pNwlxhT
I found this page from that Denver dealer who has made a good business selling repaired cars.
https://www.emichvw.com/vw-tdi-diesel-settlement-and-buyback-information/
I found another article quoting this dealership that the fix for the oldest models is 9 hrs, so yeah straight to the crusher for the majority if not all of those.
Here is the current listed inventory. https://www.emichvw.com/used-vehicles/#action=im_ajax_call&perform=get_results&fueltype%5B%5D=Diesel+Fuel&page=1&order=ASC&orderby=years Funny that many of them are listed as “in-transit” and the picture is obviously from them setting at the Pike’s Peak storage lot. They don’t seem to be doing any of the 09-10 vehicles.
Thank you Constellation. Fortunately mine has been fine so far. Hopefully they’ll extend the warranty or initiate a buy back program. I’m leaning toward a 2017+ Mazda CX-5 or Subaru Impreza as a replacement, but I’d rather wait as long as possible until I get into my next car.
Ford clearly messed this up and now that they have walked away from passenger cars (except Mustang), they will walk away from passenger car customers as well. Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Hyundai, and Kia are still in the business of making cars and will clean up when its time for domestic car buyers to look for a new one. How sad.
Looking further, passenger car buyers don’t always remain passenger car buyers. Have a good experience with a Hyundai or Mazda passenger car, wouldn’t the first stop when it comes time to buy a CUV or whatever be the same showroom that provided the good car?
It’s astounding to me that the domestics seem to believe that as soon as someone wants something in a category that they happen to still provide that they will automatically have a good shot at that buyer. Truly wishful and short-sighted thinking. You’re among the biggest companies in the world and yet you just walk away from large chunks of the market because you can’t hack it for some reason. It reflects poorly on the companies as a whole.
Ford deserves what’s coming, and it won’t be good. Sounds eerily similar to the Boeing 737 Max fiasco. Mind boggling the amount of goodwill these companies have willfully pissed away, not to mention the shareholder value they’ve destroyed, through colossal serial management stupidity.
We just unloaded our ’13 Fiesta after our insurance carrier totaled it thanks to hail storm damage. It had the transmission judder on starting off from a stop but no other problems, and otherwise was a reliable car through 7 years of college- and high school-age driving abuse.
Replaced it with a ’17 Honda Civic EX sedan, btw.
Dave – two comments:
1) Boeing can recover; they have a sophisticated, complicated and very good product. There are only two producers of big airliners. Boeing has a back log more than 4,000 airliners. Ford has a backlog of zero; Ford has to compete to sell anything and maybe they no longer can do so.
2) Dave, your Fiesta was totaled by hail. Hail is very common and very destructive along the Rocky Mountain front range in the summer months. Many cars here are often destroyed by hail storms. A Focus here might be too.
OK so I’ve admitted to being a lifelong GM fanboi multiple times on this site – EVEN AS I’ve stood with Paul about the General’s many Deadly Sins.
But is it me, or do Ford’s faux pas – even though they’ve had fewer of them – seem more high-handed and cavalier than GM’s?
To wit:
-The exploding Pinto fuel tanks, which could’ve been fixed for under a dollar a car but they ran the numbers and found it more cost-efficient to simply pay off death and injury claims?
-The high center of gravity in the first-gen Ford Explorer, which FoMoCo chose to “fix” by having owners run their tires soft, 26 psi. Of course Firestone had those tires that wouldn’t play well in hot weather at 26 psi.
-And now the DSP6.
Yeah, the GM ignition switch fiasco was pretty bad. But at least there was a fix. Apparently there is NO FIX for a faulty DSP6 and even worse, designer Getrag has refused to release the component drawings to Ford.
Sounds to me like TWO manufacturers should be held accountable.
Also should be noted that Millennials and Gen-Z are known for having ZERO loyalty to ANY BRAND. Stories like this will only deepen their distrust.
“But is it me, or do Ford’s faux pas – even though they’ve had fewer of them – seem more high-handed and cavalier than GM’s?”
You realize 124 people died because of the faulty ignition switch, right? Ford deserves no mercy for the DCT issues, but the only injuries that have occurred were due to other vehicles hitting the affected owners. I’d much rather have a faulty transmission than an ignition system that could fail and cause me to crash without the airbags being activated.
You are playing pretty loose with the fact there.
The Pinto meet all federal standards applicable to the time. The cost of life calculation was not specifically about the Pinto, and it was a gov’t defined calculation that was used.
The Explorer was equipped with both Firestone and Goodyear tires, though the Firestones were more common. No matter which tire the vehicle was equipped with the 26psi was well within industry standards for the load of the vehicle with that particular load rated tire.
The Goodyear tires didn’t have a problem, and weren’t recalled. The vast majority of the problem Firestone tires actually came out of only 1 of the 3 plants that made the tires that were destined for Explorers. So yeah it was shoddy Firestone tires and not the inflation specification.
On a counter point fact is that 26psi is the lowest acceptable pressure for a tire and by putting the spec at that point one could expect that much of the time the tires would be below their minimum operating pressure. However put the pressure higher and it would have impacted by ride quality and tire life.
My family had a Firestone store at the time of the recall. We dealt with dozens of Explorers with Firestone tires and all the ones we saw that were separated were under-inflated and/or worn out in the first place.
These cars were tall, narrow and had a heavy as lead wacky swing axle front end. Blowing a front tire in an overloaded SUV with this set up is going to make mayhem. The vehicles were basically unsafe and the load capacity tiny.
It wasn’t front tire failure that caused the majority of the accidents it was rear tire failure.
Yeah the recalled tires had a ton of miles on them by they time they were recalled. That doesn’t change the fact that only Firestones were replaced, not Goodyears.
You forgot the Ford ignition switch fire thing. There was a woman charged, and I think convicted of killing her mother. Yep here it is:
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3066
I think there’s another case where some guy got arrested for killing his wife or trying to in a Ford because of the ignition switch but when the prosecutor’s office tried to find a really qualified expert to testify it was arson, they couldn’t find one that didn’t say it was the ignition switch. They dropped the charges and then he got a couple of hundred grand for his troubles.
As I remember Honda had a massive number automatic transmission failures last decade with a million+ recall and a class action lawsuit. Odyssey owners especially often had their transmissions grenade multiple times, sometimes before the van hit 100K miles.
They seem to have weathered the storm.
I think, personally, that Honda handled their transmission problem much better than Ford has handled this situation.
”The Honda Odyssey transmission failure problem began with the 1999 model. When Honda formally recognized the problem in 2004, they initially announced a 600,000 vehicle recall at an estimated cost of $153 million to the company. Honda later expanded the recall to include nearly 1.1 million vehicles.
A class action lawsuit was filed in 2006 claiming that Honda misled consumers by selling them vehicles with defective transmissions. Honda denied the charges and settled the case without admitting a defect.
The lawsuit settlement gave 1999-2001 Honda Odyssey owners an extended warranty on the transmission of 109,000 miles or 7 years and 9 months (whichever came first). This extended warranty is now no longer available to the Honda Odyssey owners since more than eight years has passed.”
https://www.tricitytransmission.com/honda-odyssey-transmission/item/1082-2006-honda-odyssey-minivan-transmission-class-action-lawsuit-settlement
“The Honda Odyssey transmission failure problem began with the 1999 model. When Honda formally recognized the problem in 2004…”
Five years. Lots of PO’d Odyssey owners, in warranty and out. You’d think Ford would have learned from Honda’s mistakes.
My apologies for not complimenting this articles author Edward Snitkoff. Nevertheless please keep these coming. They are a welcome addition to the daily lineup.
So much for “Quality is Job 1.”
So much for “Quality is Job 1.”
Ford dropped the Q1 slogan several years ago. hmm…1998, just as they were working on the Gen 1 Focus. Didn’t the Focus set some sort of record for most recalled car ever, before they got it sorted out?
MAY 4, 1998
THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING; Ford is jettisoning its 17-year-old ‘quality is job one’ tagline for ‘Better ideas. Driven by you.’
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/04/business/media-business-advertising-ford-jettisoning-its-17-year-old-quality-job-one.html
This is simply how a lot of US businesses operate.
A post above mentioned Boeing. BA didn’t want to spend the money on a clean sheet design, because CEO Jim McNerney was spending all the company’s money buying back stock. So they ended up with a plane that tends to pitch up and stall. So they put in an electronic bandaid, because it was cheaper. But, instead of the airliner standard of a triple redundant flight control system, they relied on a single AOA vane. Then they didn’t tell anyone about the electronic bandaid because they didn’t want to tell the airlines they would have to spend money training their pilots on it.
A post above mentioned the GM ignition switch. Does anyone here think Ray DeGiorgio was operating in a vacuum, instead of being pressured to not allow anything to increase cost or delay schedule, when he approved a switch that did not meet GM’s own specifications?
I don’t remember when it was, but back when the XJ Jeep Cherokee was really popular, they had to replace the light switch, I think it was, because the one they used was junk, bought over the objections of all their engineers, so they could save a whopping 14 cents a vehicle. I was sitting next to two engineers talking about it over dinner. It was very entertaining, and sad at the same time.
Why would people keep buying their products after they pull this crap?
“They won’t do it again.” people must think.
Yes, they will. And they won’t blink. This is psychopathic behavior on the company’s part.
And Stockholm Syndrome on the consumer’s part.
So people should buy a much more expensive vehicle just so they are treated decently?
Are these people masochistic?
Or look at it this way:
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me dozens of times, and I’m an idiot.
How one is treated has nothing to do with the expense of the vehicle. For example my 2011 Mercedes GL (sticker price several multiples of any Fiesta or a Focus) was part of the Takata airbag recall. For three years there were “no parts available” due to the “backlog and production capacity shortages.” However in that same time frame multiple new Mercedes design vehicles were released and produced, No problems getting airbags designed, produced, supplied and put into those new vehicles for sale. Every day of delay increases the chance of the maker not having to pay out due to cars wearing out, getting wrecked, stolen and chopped, or whatever else.
The icing in the cake was when inquiring about trading the vehicle in at an MB dealer – “Sorry, due to the airbag issue we can’t offer as much as we normally would”. WTF, good riddance, I shan’t be darkening your door again. Vehicle was sold to CarMax and replaced by a non-MB, sourced privately.
Funny you should bring up Takata thing.
I got a letter well over a year ago regarding the one in my Cruze. It stated that I would have to wait a year to get it fixed. That would put the start date at May of 2019. I think they did this to cover their butts legally (well, we warned you!). Still haven’t bothered getting it changed.
Only a small number of the bags are affected.
I have only put on 20000km 12000 miles in the 5 years and 3 months I have owned the car, most of it in a low average speed surburban Korean environment. If you multiply the probability of me having an airbag deploying
crash by the probability that I have a shrapnel bag, I have a better chance of winning a lotto or being struck by lightning. Needless to say, I’m not losing any sleep over it. I’ll do it someday.
When Kia had an issue that might affect airbag deployment they announced that they would provide rentals for those concerned about the safety of their cars. It was not well-publicized after the initial announcement, but for those of us who read up on things a free rental was provided. I drove a brand new Sedona for a couple of months until a fix was available and completed. That action bought a lot of goodwill in the JPC house.
Hi Jim,
That’s a shame about your Mercedes. Guess they have enough money and don’t need yours or anyone else’s who reads this.
Is Toyota still (mostly) clean as far as you know?
When I will eventually buy new, I trust Toyota the most. Maybe they just have the best reputation-maintenance but either way it shows competence.
Or Kia/Hyundai. Even though I think they’re mostly ugly I would buy from them if I thought they were an ethical company.
Decency has a beauty all it’s own.
Gotta vote with your wallet.
If money is all they care about, then money is what you keep away from them.
Toyota, Honda and Hyundai are the only brands I will consider next time I shop for a new car. A Yaris iA, a Fit, Corolla or an Elantra, all with a manual transmission.
Traditional manuals, not the dual clutch travesty manuals, don’t seem to have nearly the problems the other trannys do
“Traditional manuals, not the dual clutch travesty manuals, don’t seem to have nearly the problems the other trannys do”
Unless of course it is a 2002-2017 Toyota Corolla with a manual transmission in which case it has likely ground it self to bits by the time it had 60k miles on it.
If that’s really the case the replacement would be covered by the Corolla’s 5yr, 60,000 mile power train warranty. I just don’t see Toyota continuing to offer only defective manual transmissions for a 15-year run in the Corolla, it doesn’t make any financial sense.
The Detroit Free Press deserves a tip of the hat for this. It can’t have been completely comfortable editorially or business-wise to write such a damning report about a major employer and local corporate citizen – and it’s not like Detroit needs any more bad news.
But the truth is always important. Here’s to a free, and principled, press.
In Thailand Ford Fiesta and Focus owners won a class action lawsuit against Ford in one of the first such judgments under the rather recently revised civil code. Friends and acquaintances here distinguish between Ford as a truck versus car manufacturer with the Ranger viewed positively and cars much less so after the transmission debacle.
Link:
https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/1544518/ford-to-pay-b23m-to-car-owners-in-class-action-ruling
Bob (Likes some Ford vehicles)
I prefer it when we don’t cover current auto topics.
I don’t like reading opinions about how bad a car company is when we don’t even know all the facts. Condemning an entire car company over ONE Detroit Free press story? What if that one report is missing vital facts? You want to form a mob over it? Or do you want to let the innocent remain innocent until we find out everything?
There are a lot of politics in organizations this large. There is a lot of talking, rumors, backstabbing, accusations and money to be made. We should know that after watching all the talking, rumors, backstabbing, accusations and money that gets made throughout Washington DC, NYC, California and around the world. I won’t condemn the Detroit Free Press, but I will just say that the last several years has not been a time of outstanding journalism anywhere. Reporters want to be first – and accurate, but those two goals can conflict.
So, let’s see where this goes before we start kvetching over 50 year old Pintos. You don’t condemn someone for what their grandpas did, unless you are either in the McCoy or Hatfield families.
I’m not a VW fan, but I didn’t light a match the moment it was revealed that VW deliberately mislead buyers who cared deeply about the environment. I wanted evidence. Then I wanted to understand why VW made this decision.
Ford became a car company I no longer wanted to do business with the day they killed the Panthers. I see that my defection from them is not unwarranted. Ford has shown me they are now infected with the same hubris and arrogance that toppled GM. They clawed their way to the top, became fat and complacent, and now the products and the consumers who buy them are the ones who suffer. Right out of the GM playbook. There is no American car company I care to do business with. I refuse to buy any of Chrysler’s shoddy products, GM is dead to me, and Ford is like a long-term flame who just turns to you one day and says, “I don’t love you anymore.” I suppose I’ll follow in my dear father’s footsteps and become a Toyota man, just like he did. He was a dyed in the wool GM man for decades, and even he couldn’t stomach any more of their crap and stupidity any longer. That’s me with Ford at this point. I’m going to drive my Panther until it’s disintegrated into Panther vapor, until the very atomic particles that hold it together cease to exist. Enough of this nonsense from these modern cars and the car-makers who foist this garbage upon us, the motoring public.
I’m amazed at how badly Ford screwed up. Apparently nobody remembered the lessons of the Pinto, the Explorer or the CVPI fuel tank shield debacles where trying to save a few dollars per car cost the company millions in lawsuits and recalls. It’s doubly astonishing that they were able to screw up a mature technology. The double clutch transmission has been around since the mid 80s when the PDK first appeared on Audi and Porsche racing cars. Ford should have also learned from Saab’s trouble prone single clutch semi auto as well. I guess the short term benefit if hitting deadlines and saving face at launch overrode any consideration of massive warranty claims and losing face over a crap transmission.
My name is André De Maria – Mechanical Engineer – Brazil.
I would like to keep correspondence with you, because in Brazil we have the same problems with Ford vehicles with the DPS6 transmission (6DCT250 – nicknamed PowerShift and affectionately known as PowerShit by the press).
In Brazil it was marketed from 2012 to 2016 with the PowerShift indication, and from 2016 to 2019 without this nickname, being a version which the Ford Engineer said was a “refined” project.
It’s really worth watching this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cCI_jJNyBA
We know that this transmission causes accidents and leads to injuries and deaths and we need to gather evidence of the failures and evidence of the investigations, as the Brazilian authorities are blindfolded.
In Brazil, a 3rd version of the DPS6 was still used in Tiggo 5X and 7 vehicles, presenting the same problems. This would already be more than convincing proof that the design problem was never eliminated with the interventions proposed by Ford.
https://quatrorodas.abril.com.br/noticias/exclusivo-caoa-chery-tiggo-5x-e-7-usam-velho-cambio-powershift-atualizado/
Have you already investigated the agreement that took place in conciliation courts in the EU where in the end GETRAG passed into the hands of MAGNA PT?
https://www.magna.com/company/newsroom/releases/release/2016/01/04/media-release—magna-announces-closing-of-getrag-acquisition
#RECALLJA!
#PowerShift
#PowerShit
#FordPowerShift
#FordMeFordeu
#FordidosPelaFord
In Portuguese, Ford is just a proper name. The spelling Forde does not exist; but it is possible to form verbs derived from proper nouns, where the verb conjugation in the present tense would be:
Forde – Present indicative
I ford
You Fordes
He/She Forde
we will ford
you Fordeis
They/They Forde
As “Shift” is spelled and pronounced close to the word “Shit”, Forde is similar to Foder = “Fuck”.